


you'll not feel the drowning

by thatsparrow



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, No Escape, Outer Space, Stalked by Non-Human Entity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26471473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: Royce is afraid.Operations and Transmissions Unit 15 (OT-15, or "Otis," as dubbed by the crew) doesn't note this as a matter of criticism or character judgment, but as the conclusion to a series of empirical biological analyses. His pupils are dilated, his breathing accelerated, his heart-rate increased beyond normal parameters, likely as a result of the as-yet-unseen presence that has both damaged theHestia's engines and—done away with the bulk of her crew.
Relationships: Robot Who Wonders What It's Like Having Human Emotions & Human Who Wants to Stop Feeling
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10
Collections: Jump Scare 2020





	you'll not feel the drowning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



> title from "the island" by the decemberists

Royce is afraid.

Operations and Transmissions Unit 15 (OT-15, or "Otis," as dubbed by the crew) doesn't note this as a matter of criticism or character judgment, but as the conclusion to a series of empirical biological analyses. His pupils are dilated, his breathing accelerated, his heartrate increased beyond normal parameters—textbook characteristics of the so-called _fight or flight_ mechanism. Royce is afraid, and so his body is preparing to do one or the other in response.

Here, Otis leaves empiricism for hypothesis in determining the source, but available evidence (and prior collected data of Royce's fear patterns) would suggest that this particular system response has been triggered by the as-yet-unseen presence that has both damaged the _Hestia_ 's engines and—done away with the bulk of her crew. (Admittedly, not the most specific of descriptors, but Otis is disinclined to choose a more definite one without having found any concrete evidence following each crew member's disappearance. That is, despite what the bulk of Otis's calculations would suggest, survival cannot be eliminated as a possibility when no bodies have yet been found.)

Otis's hypothesis is strengthened when another groan shudders along the length of the ship, trembling the narrow walls of their current confines, and Royce inhales sharply. "We're fucked."

His voice is shaky—further evidence of a fear response. Otis considers the possible connotations of the word in this context. "Fucked?"

"Yeah, fucked." Royce wipes a thin sheen of sweat from his hairline, his palm trembling slightly as he does. "And not in the fun, sexy sense of the word, but the decidedly un-fun, _oh, god, we're going to die_ sense." He exhales, shaky, sitting down on the lid of a crate and lowering his head between his knees. "Jesus Christ, I feel like I'm gonna piss myself."

Otis tilts its head. "This is another element of the human reaction to fear?"

"I guess so?" Royce's foot is jittery against the floor—usually evidence of an over-indulgence of caffeine tablets, but Otis supposes otherwise, in this particular instance. "Or it's a nervous thing, I think. Like when I was in the Academy, I felt like I had to run to the bathroom the whole time I was trying to ask out this guy, Mateo. _Fuck,_ I was so nervous—not that any of that matters now." He lets out a laugh, but it's unusual from the version Otis has heard before—stuttered, pitched in a higher register. He looks at Otis, eyes wide in something most akin to desperation. "There's no way out of this, is there?"

Otis runs another iteration of this particular diagnostic, the thirty-eighth its done following the initial malfunction of the engines, sudden and damaging enough to suggest that some force had scuttled them in deep space. Few of the variables have changed, but per Royce's request, Otis calculates again. "Escape is possible, but a low-percentage outcome. Whatever sabotaged our systems has also disabled the shuttle, eliminating that avenue of retreat. Initial assessments suggest the engines are repairable, but any course of action assumes an extended timetable, as we are operating with reduced manpower due to the likely elimination of members of the crew—"

" _Likely?_ " Royce barks with that same, shaky laugh. "For fuck's sake, Otis, we heard them _screaming_."

"However our most significant obstacle is the presence of an unknown entity either outside or within the ship, about which we know very little—excepting that it seems to have targeted our engines and prioritized the abduction of the crew—and thus any calculation is complicated by an inherent number of unknown variables. Even so, given our dwindling resources and the limited options offered by our current vantage—"

"It's a storage closet. It may actually be our smallest and shittiest storage closet."

"—the majority of simulated scenarios point to our experiencing a similar outcome as the rest of the crew."

"So, dead?"

"Presumably," Otis says.

Royce shakes his head, but it seems more of exasperation than disagreement; unlikely his own analysis of the situation has suggested a different result. "Fucking _perfect_ ," he says, uncharacteristically sharp. "This is always how I wanted to go—playing fucking hide and seek in a fucking broom closet with a fucking robot while getting hunted by some deep-space eldritch fucking _fuck_." He blinks his eyes closed, holding them shut for a moment. When they open, his lash line is ringed with tears—another fear response—but then he shakes his head, offers Otis an approximation of a smile, which is unexpected, given his current behavioral model. "Shit, Otis, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, the _fucking robot_ part. I'm just—" Royce lets out another shaky exhale, wipes at his nose with his sleeve. "I'm just scared."

"It's okay," Otis says. "Technically inaccurate, but okay."

Royce blinks a few times, then laughs like it's a surprise. "Christ, was that a joke?"

Otis wasn't built with the capacity to smile, nor programmed to feel amusement, but it supposes it would then, if it could. "I believe so. As for your comment, though, don't trouble yourself—I don't have the coding to experience unkindness, or hurt, or, in fact, any emotion at all." Perhaps it's a blessing that Otis isn't advanced enough to have warranted facial musculature, as they might now exercise themselves into a frown. "They were deemed superfluous for the OT-models, calculated to siphon unnecessary processing power—to be inefficient. I'm sure they were correct."

The ship shudders again, the hull groaning. Somewhere on one of the upper decks, something avalanche-heavy echoes through the corridors. Royce's smile flickers out, replaced by something nervous. "Honestly, I don't think I'd mind that right now, all that _no emotions_ shit. Bad enough knowing that I'm probably going to die without agonizing through every goddamn second leading up to it."

Otis pauses, calculates in what might be a human approximation of blinking. "What are they like?"

Royce frowns. "What, emotions?"

"Yes. I—" here, Otis struggles; despite having a dictionary's worth of words to pull from, it isn't entirely sure what it means to articulate. "I understand the physicality of them, the chemical reactions in the body, the biological responses they manifest, but I don't understand the—feeling of them. I know how to recognize fear, but I have no sense of what it means to experience fear."

Another creak, a distant _bang_. Above them, the lights dim; Royce's hands are trembling. "You're not missing out—I'd trade mine with you in a heartbeat, if I could." He exhales, a shaky half-laugh, then quiets when he sees that Otis is still watching him. "I mean—shit, man, I don't know how to explain it. They're overwhelming, mostly. Like, sure, fear is supposed to kick your body into action, fight-or-flight and all that shit, but in my experience, when the panic is bad enough, it just locks you up, turns you too cold then too hot, plays fucking kickball in your stomach."

"That seems inefficient."

"Fucking tell me about it. But that's the point of fear, you know? I mean, you don't, but, like—it wouldn't be fear if you weren't afraid _of_ something. Fear of dying, fear of failing, fear of fucking up, fear of whatever the hell else. You don't want something to happen powerfully enough that your whole body responds to it, but we don't have the benefit of all that super-computer processing power, can't calculate the percentage of each outcome to the thousandth decimal place, so—we panic. We freeze, because sometimes it feels like making the wrong decision is worse than making any decision at all."

Closer now, there's the scraping echo of metal-on-metal, vibrating through the cavernous shape of the _Hestia_ like something wailing with alien lungs. One more variable determined—the entity is persistent. Otis watches as Royce laces his hands around the back of his neck, muscles tensed hard enough to bruise; it's simple enough analysis to observe that Royce's fear levels had faded while engaged in conversation, and even simpler analysis to see that panic is doing little to benefit him at this moment. As the walls shake again, as something low—and, judging by the skin of Royce's arms, of a hair-raising frequency—resounds through the metal, Otis says, "What else?"

"What?" 

"You say fear is paralyzing, I can envision that. How do other emotions feel? Joy? Melancholy?"

"Jesus, Otis, what's the fucking point?" Royce snaps. His attention has turned to the door, and Otis—on strange, unfamiliar, unprogrammed impulse—reaches out to rest a hand on his knee. Royce looks back, surprised, then takes a deep breath, exhaling again. "Sorry. That was anger, I guess. Or frustration. That's—shit, how do you explain emotions to someone who has no frame of reference for them? Like trying to describe what colors are to someone who lives in monochrome."

"I don't know," Otis says, one of the few times it has done so. "I don't know, but I would be curious for you to try, if you're interested. Perhaps in doing so, you might help me attain some measure of understanding of them." Otis tilts its head. "Perhaps in doing so, you might feel less overwhelmed by your own."

"Yeah," Royce says, swallowing. "Maybe—I mean, fuck it, right? Not like there's anything better for us to do, not like we've got any way out of this without some divine goddamn intervention." He laughs, but Otis can detect no humor in it. "Not like I want to spend my last however-many minutes counting the rivets in the ceiling or tallying up our remaining stores of soap or toothpaste or fucking whatever."

"No, likely not." Here, too, Otis would smile if it could. "If you're curious, though, our inventory numbers for soap and toothpaste and any additional stores are stocked in my memory banks."

"Of course they are." The walls shudder again; Otis wouldn't divulge this, but the disturbances are now originating from the same deck as their storage locker. Royce takes a slow breath, deliberately doesn't look anywhere but Otis's faceplate. "Okay. Okay, sure. A crash-course in emotions, I can do that, right?" Otis nods, and Royce smiles in response, a little weak, but steady. "Okay. I like the idea of starting with joy, as far as options go. Might as well think positive, yeah? Put on a happy face, mind over matter, all that jazz."

So he does, as Otis—for the first, and likely the only time—diverts its remaining processing power from analyses of the _Hestia_ 's operations, navigations, and engineering systems, and instead does its level best to conjure the associations offered by Royce, to translate the collection of images and described sensations and esoteric ideas into an amalgamation that might approximate feelings. Understands, for the briefest, flickering moment, some semblance of what it might mean to be human.


End file.
